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Hurricane Helene
Sep. 28th, 2024 06:23 amtl;dr We're all safe and fine and didn't get it as bad as other places.
But that storm was definitely worse than anyone around here expected it was going to be.
That little system showed up on the NHC maps last week in the southern Gulf and they knew within a few days it was going to be at least a cat 3 and track toward the panhandle. We had plenty of warning, and I'm glad the coast did too. But even with all that warning, little things can make a big difference.
Namely, winds were originally supposed to pick up around 8am on Thursday and she was supposed to make landfall midday as a cat 3 and she was going to track west of Tallahassee. Instead, she slowed down long enough to become a cat 4 and then went east. That meant we got a lot more wind than anyone had prepared for; I'm glad I realized what was happening mid-afternoon and brought the chickens in. I'd been lulled into a false sense of safety with the last few storms turning away last minute or being weaker than expected, but as soon as I saw we were going to get 50+ sustained winds, I realized we hadn't planned for this.
The power went out around 10pm and I just lay in the silence, listening to the thump-thump-THUMP of branches hitting our roof. There wasn't a lot of rain, just wind, and it was loud. I saw the light turn on under CG's door; I'd given her a flashlight and showed her how to use it if she got scared in the dark. Toddler didn't even stir.
When I woke up again it was 5am and the power was still out. I said, eff it, threw on my clothes and wiggled the bike out of the garage side door to go to crossfit. At least they'd have power and I could get some cold water, I figured. But it turned out, no. They didn't have power. No one had power. I wasn't even out of our neighborhood before I realized how much of a fool's errand this was going to be--every house dark, every streetlight out, just complete darkness. Yet I kept going because, well, they'd held crossfit classes when it was sideways raining in a tropical storm before, and now it wasn't even raining.
The main road was even eerier. All I had was my bike light, shining at an angle and making all the debris on the sidewalk loom large. I had to walk my bike around a fallen tree that took up part of the road, too. When I got to the plaza the gym is in and there were still no lights, I knew no one was going to show up. I circled around and headed back, slowly and carefully and a little chagrined. It felt like the whole city was dark.
Checking the outage map at home only confirmed my feeling. Apparently there were a few places in town with power, but most were without. I couldn't do much so I just read in the dark with a flashlight until the sun came up and we could actually see the damage.
Our street was largely spared. After letting the chickens out and cleaning up the garage (and making breakfast on the grill, because I'd been waiting since the last hurricane to do that, lol), CG and I went for a bike-about to survey the neighborhood. That's when it really hit how much worse this storm was. Usually there's maybe one, two fallen trees after a storm. This time it was tree after tree after tree. One blocking the road completely, one half in the road, one across the back of a house, one cracked in half over a car, one straight through a fence. Neighbors were out looking, too, and they all seemed okay, if a bit shaken.
Power was coming back bit by bit. Ours hummed back on around noon. According to the utility service, two major transmission lines had gone down in the wind. They posted pictures of electrical poles snapped in half and dragged out of the ground, poles hanging from wires or just laying across the street. They were working on getting the transmission lines back up first, but all the outages in the wake of Helene meant the workers were spread thin. I'm honestly surprised we got power back as fast as we did. By the time I went to bed last night, only 1/3rd of the city was still dark.
Most of the parks and playgrounds are closed, too, while the city cleans up the damage. I told Lady that this weekend I want to spend some time cleaning up the sidewalks and pulling the larger branches out of the bike lane. There should be school on Monday, but honestly... who knows.
I mentioned something else-web that most places had expected to be open on Friday and had to hurriedly post closure notices instead, and that was the strongest indicator that we really weren't expecting this to be so bad. Even the university was like "whoops, yeah, we won't be open today." The grocery store down the road is still lights-out; I hope they're able to donate some of their food before it all spoils.
Despite it being worse than expected, we're still okay. This wasn't Charley, where half the city was flooded, too. We got lucky with the lack of rain. It's horrifying to see all those images/videos out of the Carolinas and Georgia, with the roads turned to rivers. The warnings for those areas came a little late and I'm sure some folks didn't take it seriously because landfall was way far away.
I think we're all just a little shook, because typically the storms that have come through have weakened more or swung further away from us last minute, not the other way around. It's probably good we got that reminder in a way that wasn't super dangerous, and I hope this means folks will take storms a little more seriously.
And considering there's already another disturbance in the gulf in the same place Helene formed, we might have another chance at that soon.
But that storm was definitely worse than anyone around here expected it was going to be.
That little system showed up on the NHC maps last week in the southern Gulf and they knew within a few days it was going to be at least a cat 3 and track toward the panhandle. We had plenty of warning, and I'm glad the coast did too. But even with all that warning, little things can make a big difference.
Namely, winds were originally supposed to pick up around 8am on Thursday and she was supposed to make landfall midday as a cat 3 and she was going to track west of Tallahassee. Instead, she slowed down long enough to become a cat 4 and then went east. That meant we got a lot more wind than anyone had prepared for; I'm glad I realized what was happening mid-afternoon and brought the chickens in. I'd been lulled into a false sense of safety with the last few storms turning away last minute or being weaker than expected, but as soon as I saw we were going to get 50+ sustained winds, I realized we hadn't planned for this.
The power went out around 10pm and I just lay in the silence, listening to the thump-thump-THUMP of branches hitting our roof. There wasn't a lot of rain, just wind, and it was loud. I saw the light turn on under CG's door; I'd given her a flashlight and showed her how to use it if she got scared in the dark. Toddler didn't even stir.
When I woke up again it was 5am and the power was still out. I said, eff it, threw on my clothes and wiggled the bike out of the garage side door to go to crossfit. At least they'd have power and I could get some cold water, I figured. But it turned out, no. They didn't have power. No one had power. I wasn't even out of our neighborhood before I realized how much of a fool's errand this was going to be--every house dark, every streetlight out, just complete darkness. Yet I kept going because, well, they'd held crossfit classes when it was sideways raining in a tropical storm before, and now it wasn't even raining.
The main road was even eerier. All I had was my bike light, shining at an angle and making all the debris on the sidewalk loom large. I had to walk my bike around a fallen tree that took up part of the road, too. When I got to the plaza the gym is in and there were still no lights, I knew no one was going to show up. I circled around and headed back, slowly and carefully and a little chagrined. It felt like the whole city was dark.
Checking the outage map at home only confirmed my feeling. Apparently there were a few places in town with power, but most were without. I couldn't do much so I just read in the dark with a flashlight until the sun came up and we could actually see the damage.
Our street was largely spared. After letting the chickens out and cleaning up the garage (and making breakfast on the grill, because I'd been waiting since the last hurricane to do that, lol), CG and I went for a bike-about to survey the neighborhood. That's when it really hit how much worse this storm was. Usually there's maybe one, two fallen trees after a storm. This time it was tree after tree after tree. One blocking the road completely, one half in the road, one across the back of a house, one cracked in half over a car, one straight through a fence. Neighbors were out looking, too, and they all seemed okay, if a bit shaken.
Power was coming back bit by bit. Ours hummed back on around noon. According to the utility service, two major transmission lines had gone down in the wind. They posted pictures of electrical poles snapped in half and dragged out of the ground, poles hanging from wires or just laying across the street. They were working on getting the transmission lines back up first, but all the outages in the wake of Helene meant the workers were spread thin. I'm honestly surprised we got power back as fast as we did. By the time I went to bed last night, only 1/3rd of the city was still dark.
Most of the parks and playgrounds are closed, too, while the city cleans up the damage. I told Lady that this weekend I want to spend some time cleaning up the sidewalks and pulling the larger branches out of the bike lane. There should be school on Monday, but honestly... who knows.
I mentioned something else-web that most places had expected to be open on Friday and had to hurriedly post closure notices instead, and that was the strongest indicator that we really weren't expecting this to be so bad. Even the university was like "whoops, yeah, we won't be open today." The grocery store down the road is still lights-out; I hope they're able to donate some of their food before it all spoils.
Despite it being worse than expected, we're still okay. This wasn't Charley, where half the city was flooded, too. We got lucky with the lack of rain. It's horrifying to see all those images/videos out of the Carolinas and Georgia, with the roads turned to rivers. The warnings for those areas came a little late and I'm sure some folks didn't take it seriously because landfall was way far away.
I think we're all just a little shook, because typically the storms that have come through have weakened more or swung further away from us last minute, not the other way around. It's probably good we got that reminder in a way that wasn't super dangerous, and I hope this means folks will take storms a little more seriously.
And considering there's already another disturbance in the gulf in the same place Helene formed, we might have another chance at that soon.
